Cuarón's win ce­ments his sta­tus as this year's Os­car fron­trun­ner for Best Di­rec­tor.

“Roma” au­teur Al­fonso Cuarón won the Golden Globe for Best Di­rec­tor at the 2019 cer­e­mony. Cuarón won the same award for “Grav­ity” in 2014, and his “Y Tu Mamá Tam­bién” was nom­i­nated for Best Mo­tion Pic­ture — For­eign Lan­guage in 2002. “Roma” also earned a nom­i­na­tion for Best Screen­play and won for Best Mo­tion Pic­ture — For­eign Lan­guage (it was not el­i­gi­ble for Best Pic­ture — Drama). The other nom­i­nees in the Best Di­rec­tor cat­e­gory were Adam McKay (“Vice”), Bradley Cooper (“A Star Is Born”), Peter Far­relly (“Green Book”), and Spike Lee (“BlacKkKlans­man”).

Tap­ping into the film­maker’s own child­hood in the epony­mous Mex­ico City neigh­bor­hood, “Roma” fol­lows an indige­nous maid named Cleo (first-time ac­tress Yal­itza Apari­cio) through a tu­mul­tuous stretch of time in 1970, as her tightly con­strained per­sonal life plays out against the back­drop of var­i­ous do­mes­tic and po­lit­i­cal crises.

Cuarón’s Golden Globes win is the lat­est in a long string of land­marks for his ex­tremely per­sonal del­i­cate black-and-white tone poem, which won the Golden Lion at last year’s Venice Film Fes­ti­val be­fore tak­ing the top prize from the vast ma­jor­ity of ma­jor crit­ics groups (in­clud­ing the New York Film Crit­ics Cir­cle and the Los An­ge­les Film Crit­ics As­so­ci­a­tion) and in­spir­ing Net­flix to re­think its ap­proach to the­atri­cal dis­tri­bu­tion. “Roma,” which is now avail­able on Net­flix, is widely ex­pected to be­come the stream­ing giant’s first Best Pic­ture nom­i­nee when the Academy Award nom­i­na­tions are an­nounced later this month.